Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue, An American Life, is flying off bookstore shelves, and thousands are lining up wherever Palin appears on her book-signing tour. Her interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters, and conservative radio and cable TV talk-show hosts have drawn huge audiences. Will Palin’s book and public appearances improve her political prospects? What do they suggest about her intentions?

In a recent Fox News poll, Palin’s overall approval rating has jumped from 38 percent in July to 47 percent. Among self-identified Republicans, “Palin gets the highest favorable ratings (70 percent) amid a group of other possible contenders for the GOP nomination, including Mike Huckabee (63 percent), Mitt Romney (60 percent) and Newt Gingrich (58 percent).” Palin still has a long way to go to win over moderates and Independents, but she is off to a good start.

Listening to all the chatter about Palin’s book and the questions most interviewers have been asking her, you might get the impression it’s principally about the controversies surrounding her 2008 vice presidential campaign and her attempt to set the record straight. She certainly addresses them in her book.

She talks about the friction between her and John McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt. She admits she didn’t do well in the Katie Couric interview and explains why. She addresses the $150,000.00-wardrobe controversy. And she talks about the fusillade of frivolous ethics complaints filed against her in Alaska after the campaign; they cost her several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees and played a major role in her decision to resign from the governorship of Alaska.

Her critics, of course, accuse her of “whining.” Personally, I don’t think she comes off that way in the book. Given the unprecedented level of gratuitous misinformation, ridicule, and invective directed at her and her family, she has every right tell her side of the story, and she does it effectively.

If this is all you plan to read the book for, however, don’t bother. Palin already has talked extensively about these issues in numerous TV and radio interviewers. If you didn’t see them when they were broadcast, you can watch and listen to them on the Internet.

If, however, you want to better understand who Sarah Palin really is, what her fundamental values are, and how they were formed, you’ll find the book a compelling read. Palin refers to herself as a commonsense conservative, and in Going Rogue she tells us how she became one. She tells us about her family, her faith, her love of sports, the rigors of Alaskan life, and her interest and success in Alaskan politics. She tells us about the issues, causes, and people that are important to her. She gives us her commonsense-conservative manifesto.

If you didn’t like Palin before or if you’re a sufferer of Palin derangement syndrome, reading Going Rogue isn’t going to change your mind about her. There’s a high probability you won’t bother to read it anyway. If you loved her before, it will only reinforce how you feel about her. Somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Americans, however, still haven’t made up their minds about Palin. For them, Reading Going Rogue, will help them decide.

Many of them will conclude that she’s an intelligent, articulate, dedicated woman and that she was a competent and successful mayor, chairperson of Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, and governor. They’ll also conclude that the mistakes Palin admits making during the campaign and her resignation as governor weren’t politically fatal ones as far as they are concerned. This is what Democrats fear most.

If these undecideds have any doubt about how much of the book is Sarah Palin and how much of it is ghost writer/editor Lynn Vincent, they’ll discover that every page of Going Rogue is thoroughly Palin. Her thought processes, personality, values and political perspective shine through.

The buzz and media interest in Palin’s book will fade, but not in her. It’s three years till the next presidential election, and a great deal will happen between now and them--not the least of which are the 2010 elections. The country, the media, and Democrats will watch her intensely. Everything depends on what Palin does with her time and with the spotlight she commands.

Her most ardent supporters want her to set her sights on the 2012 election and become the Republican nominee. History, conservative populism, and overreaching Democrats, they believe, provide the right opportunity. Republicans and conservatives are hungry for a charismatic leader who can win the White House and lead them back to a majority in the Congress. They know that to win the White House in 2012 they will need a candidate that can match Obama’s star power and rhetorical skills and who can offer a commonsense-conservative alternative to the Democrat’s agenda.

Going Rogue gives few clues to Sarah Palin’s intentions, but there’s little doubt that she’s a media star and a political force Democrats must reckon with. There's also little doubt that Sarah Palin is determined to play a leading role in national politics, and that, most likely, means running for President.

The left's strategy thus far has been to ridicule, demean, and write Palin off as a joke. Palin, however, has emerged from these attacks with her head held high and her spirit unbroken. In Going Rogue she demonstrates that she won't be deterred by ridicule and personal attacks. Democrats underestimate her at their peril.